Evening â€“ Other Victorians (CD)

Coming through with a very post-hardcore sound, mixing elements of Coldplay, Pink Floyd, the Weakerthans, and the entire early-1990s indie rock movement. Mattâ€™s voice is quirky and at times inconsistent with the style of music that Evening plays. While the promo sheet for this release is littered with the praise of in-house writers proclaiming the originality of Evening, I really tend to find this disc par for the course in CMJ-Alternative Rock. â€œDarmstadtâ€ starts out with an emotional guitar line that is demarcated from the rest of the disc with the force it contains â€“ the simple fact is that many of the tracks on â€œOther Victoriansâ€ suffer from a lack of emotion. However, the problem keeps resurfacing with the lack of cohesion in â€œDarmstadtâ€ as well as in other tracks â€“ Mattâ€™s voice is at crossroads with the music laid down by the rest of the band.

Lookout had reached new heights with both the new Washdown and Mr. T Experience albums, but â€œOther Victoriansâ€ seems to be just a moneymaker for the band. The â€œAggressive campaign to press, targeting music and lifestyle fashion magazinesâ€ blurb on their promo sheet marks them more as a commodity, like underwear or Axe cologne, instead of a living, breathing, caring band. A weak effort by a band that makes no effort to try and push the boundary makes â€œOther Victoriansâ€ an album that no one should pick up.